Privacy Policy
Introduction
Our practice is committed to best practice in relation to the management of information we collect. This practice has developed a policy to protect patient privacy in compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (‘the Privacy Act’). Our policy is to inform you of:
the kinds of information that we collect and hold, which, as a dental prosthetic practice, is likely to be ‘health information’ for the purposes of the Privacy Act;
how we collect and hold personal information;
the purposes for which we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information;
how you may access your personal information and seek the correction of that information;
how you may complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles; how we deal with a complaint;
whether we are likely to disclose personal information to overseas recipients.
What kinds of personal information do we collect?
The type of information we may collect and hold includes:
Your name, address, date of birth, email and contact details
DVA number and other government identifiers, although we will not use these for the purposes of identifying you in our practice
Other health information about you, including:
o notes of your symptoms or diagnosis and the treatment given to you
o your general dentist or dental specialist reports
o your appointment and billing details
o your medication and health information
o your dental prosthetic treatment records.
How do we collect and hold personal information?
We will generally collect personal information:
from you directly when you provide your details to us. This might be via a face to face discussion, telephone conversation, registration form or online form
from a person responsible for you
from third parties where the Privacy Act or other law allows it - this may include, but is not limited to: other members of your treating team of dental practitioners.
Why do we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information?
In general, we collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:
to provide dental prosthetic services to you
to communicate with you solely in relation to the dental prosthetics service being provided to you. We do not engage in direct marketing with our patients.
to comply with our legal obligations, including, but not limited to, mandatory notification of communicable diseases or mandatory reporting under applicable child protection legislation
to help us manage our accounts and administrative services, including billing, arrangements with health funds, pursuing unpaid accounts, management of our ITC systems
for consultations with other dental practitioners involved in your dental healthcare;
to liaise with your health fund, government and regulatory bodies such as Medicare, the Department of Veteran's Affairs and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) (if you make a privacy complaint to the OAIC), as necessary.
How can you access and correct your personal information?
You have a right to seek access to, and correction of the personal information which we hold about you. For details on how to access and correct your health record, please contact our practice as noted following. We will normally respond to your request within 30 business days.
Contact: Practice Principal, Shane Chambers Dental Prosthetics Email: info@shanechambersdental.com.au
How do we hold your personal information?
Our staff are trained and required to respect and protect your privacy. We take reasonable steps to protect information held from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. This includes:
holding your information on an encrypted database in secure third party storage (using SSL certification for encryption in transit and data is also encrypted at rest and backed up daily, using standard AES encryption)
our staff sign confidentiality agreements and access to personal information is on a ‘need to know’ basis
our practice has paper document retention and destruction policy.
Privacy related questions and complaints
If you have any questions about privacy-related issues or wish to complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles or the handling of your personal information by us, you may lodge your complaint in writing to (see below for details). We will normally respond to your request within 30 business days.
If you are dissatisfied with our response, you may refer the matter to the OAIC:
Phone: 1300 363 992 Post: GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au Website: www.oaic.gov.au
Anonymity and pseudonyms
The Privacy Act provides that individuals must have the option of not identifying themselves, or of using a pseudonym, when dealing with our practice, except in certain circumstances, such as where it is impracticable for us to deal with you if you have not identified yourself (including provision of dental prosthetic services and billing).
Overseas disclosure
We may disclose your personal information to the following overseas recipients:
We recognise that privacy and cloud-based storage services can be a complex issue. We use an overseas based cloud-storage service provider and the information is encrypted to the point where the cloud service provider cannot access it, but merely stores it. As such we consider that our practice holds and uses that personal information and does not disclose it to the cloud service provider.
Privacy and websites
Refer to the terms in our ITC policy published on our website.
Contact details for privacy related issues
Contact: Practice principal, Shane Chambers Dental Prosthetics
Phone: 07 4724 2325 Email: info@shanechambersdental.com.au
Postal: PO Box 1845 Townsville Qld 4810 Website: www.shanechambersdental.com.au
Consequences of breach of this policy
Any breach of this privacy policy may result in disciplinary action, and in the event of serious misconduct may result in the termination of employment or contract.
Updates to this Policy
This Policy will be reviewed from time to time to take account of new laws and technology, changes to our operations and other necessary developments. Updates will be published on the practice website without notification.
Date:14/01/2023